


They

by Prochytes



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-20
Updated: 2013-11-20
Packaged: 2018-01-02 04:59:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remarkably, the Doctor was the easy one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for DW to “The Angels Take Manhattan” and small spoilers for TW to the end of 4x01 “The New World”. The titles are taken from stories by Rudyard Kipling. Originally posted on LJ in 2013.

1\. A Doctor of Medicine

“You said that we’d meet in your office, Dr. Jones.”

“This is my office. I come quite often.” Martha Jones looked up. “Thank you, Francesco. The _Quattro Formaggi_ is for my friend.”

“It’s a restaurant in a mall.” Kate Stewart peered out over the balcony as the waiter departed. “A vertical mall. At Shepherd’s Bush.”

“Good things have been known to come out of Shepherd’s Bush, Dr. Stewart.”

“I don’t doubt it. Dr. Jones…”

“‘Martha’, please.”

“Martha… why did you leave UNIT?”

Martha cocked her head on one side. “Are you here to coax me back?”

“We’d love to have you. But, right now, I’m more interested in the reasons why we don’t.”

“UNIT was changing. Changing itself. And changing me. There didn’t seem to be any need for a doctor anymore.”

“My… immediate predecessors had a rather different vision of UNIT’s rôle from mine.”

“Yes. Your predecessors did.” Martha sipped her mineral water, and checked her watch. “This meeting, Dr. Stewart…”

“‘Kate’, please.”

“It’s not just me you’re reaching out to, is it? It’s all of us.”

“Yes.” Kate twisted pepper over her plate before meeting Martha’s gaze once more. “UNIT has become… arrogant, to my way of thinking, in recent years. We started to forget that there are others on this planet who have as much, if not more, experience with the problems that we face as UNIT does. And most of those people talk to you.”

“Some of them. Those who are left.”

“Yes.” The perfume shop in the level below the restaurant was running a Petrichor campaign. Kate had been borne up to this giddy eyrie on an escalator, watched throughout by the dark eyes of Amelia Pond. She wondered whether Martha had planned this gauntlet for her to run. “Those who are left.”

“I can put you in touch with most of them, if they’re willing. The Cambridge mob. Dorothy, so long as she’s in the country. But, Kate, if you’re serious about this, if you truly want to restore everything that’s lost, UNIT is going to have to say the Word. And that will have consequences.”

“I know.”

“It’s not a step your predecessors were prepared to take.”

“My predecessors had their reasons. Martha, why did you really bring me here? You’ve checked your watch three times in the last five minutes. What’s going to happen?”

“Look down into the concourse of the mall.”

Kate looked. 

The Doctor was there. Not in the body she had met – this one sported a brown suit. He span on his heel in converse trainers, as he quaffed the bright world around him in giant gulps. And at his side….

“No.” Martha’s hand clamped down on Kate’s wrist as she started. For such a small woman, Dr. Jones had a surprisingly iron grip. “Crossing into established events is strictly forbidden. Except for cheap tricks.” 

Kate looked from Martha below, scurrying to keep pace with her taller companion, to Martha sitting beside her in the restaurant, who shrugged. “I did say that I’ve been here before.”

“What were you doing?”

“I felt peckish. So, we parked the TARDIS next to the mall and found some mints. Well, mints and a couple of Autons, actually. Don’t worry about that; we sort it out.” Martha leaned against the balcony. “What matters is what follows. Watch the dance.”

It wasn’t quite like ripples from a pebble. It was at once more chaotic and more controlled. The three children who had followed the madman’s gaze to see where he had looked, who gaped, now, as he had, at the sunlight that lay spread-eagled against the glass. The teenager wringing her own pirouettes, in imitation of his, from the polished marble. And they were observed in turn, and their gestures were reflected, and refracted, but the full luxuriance of movement stirred by the passing of the man in brown and his companion was known only to the two women watching from aloft, and to the scrutiny of the Girl Who No Longer Waited.

“When you’re with him,” Martha’s voice in Kate’s ear was almost a shock, “you see the wonders. Or the horrors. Or him, because, let’s face it, he makes a habit of getting in the way, and he can’t quite switch that off even for his mates. You don’t see _them_ , or what they make of it. They’re inspired, or they’re puzzled, or they’re exasperated, or perhaps they honestly couldn’t give a toss, but what they do with it isn’t what any of us expects. That’s one of the things that UNIT needs to remember.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Martha smiled. “It’s my office.”

“You said, ‘ _One_ of the things…’”

“You’ll see what I mean, if you say the Word. But you should know in advance that the Word can’t be unsaid.”

 

2\. A Madonna of the Trenches

“So, this is the story, at least as I was told it.”

Kate blinked into the encompassing dark, and drew a breath before she continued. 

“It happened in Scotland, as stories often do. Like many Scottish stories, it was composed from equal parts of faith and blood. There was a family – great once, but long since on its uppers – and all this family really had left to its name was a sacred grove. Since time immemorial, it had been their burden and their glory to maintain that grove, and allow no violence to be done within it.

“Then the brigands came. 

“The brigands used the grove as a place of refuge. Outside the forest, they slaughtered and plundered and raped to their hearts’ content; inside, they always held their peace. Because they knew that as long as they did no violence in the grove, the family would allow no violence to fall on them. A perfect haven. The family grieved, at what the grove had become. But they knew their duty. The grove was all they had. What would they be in the world without it?

“And then, one day, a new heir of the family came into his inheritance. The night after he entered man’s estate, he roused his men. They went to the forest. They burnt it to ash, with the brigands all inside. 

“This man, you see, was wiser than his fathers. He recognised the truth his forebears had not. That there is no need for custody of a sacred grove when the world sees a man who would bring all that is his to dust, without a second thought, before he would allow that evil prosper.

“Or when it sees a sociopath with an over-developed thirst for spectacle. One of the two.

“The family waxed again. The story dwindled. It became an estate, an enterprise, a name. It became a word. I rather think that I’m sitting here, in my HQ, talking aloud during a suspiciously protracted power-cut, because, this morning, I ordered UNIT to say the word.”

Kate paused, as her retinas tricked her with patterns. Meaning forged from the indifferent dark.

“Torchwood.”

“Bandying that word about in public,” the voice from the dark was low, with a lilting accent, “has made some serious men in serious suits very, very cross.”

“I guessed it might.”

“Nicely done.”

“Who…?”

“Your broom-cupboards are roomy. I’d go so far as to describe them as palatial.”

Kate frowned. “Why are you so interested in our broom-cupboards?”

“They’re where I stacked your guards. Wouldn’t want them to get claustrophobic when they wake up.”

“Hmmm. The security systems?”

“Disabled.”

“The Ravens of Death?”

“Sedated. Though not before they took a piece out of my favourite jacket. I hadn’t honestly thought that they were real.”

“There’s a lot of that going about. Might I possibly lay eyes on my interlocutor, now? I think that you’ve adequately made your point.”

The lights coughed apologetically, and ushered the room back in. 

Kate had seen only one, blurred picture of the woman who was leaning against the wall. (How the others had disappeared from the Black Archive was a matter of on-going investigation.) In the flesh, Gwen Cooper was disconcerting. She looked like the young mothers Kate saw sometimes in the street, wearing the vaguely beleaguered expression of one who wonders whether she can honestly justify the trek to Waitrose. It was hard to match that face to the harrowing of the Charnel Equations in Budapest, or the quite large bits of Nevada that were still glowing. 

“You were thorough. I’ll give you that.” Gwen kicked off the wall, and padded across the room to stand in front of Kate’s chair. “UNIT’s websites, Twitter, the blogosphere. It’s been a while since the world was a billboard for Torchwood’s name. The last time, as you may recall, did not end well.”

“I took a lesson from our enemies”, said Kate, trying not to lay excessive emphasis on “our”. “Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.”

“Do you think that we’re the devil, Dr. Stewart?”

“Truth be told, I don’t know what you are. Mike Yates – he was a man who worked with my father – used to call your show ‘Gibraltar’. An embarrassing relic of Empire, stocked with far too many primates scratching their bums. My father thought that unfair. On Gibraltar. But what are you now? A terrorist cell, a philosophy, a movement? The CIA’s started calling you ‘Occupy Area 51’.”

“I know. I’ve read the internal memos.”

“We’ve all seen the fall-out from your shadow war. That corrupt politician in Miami, last year, whom someone had gifted a mind-controlling gaze. He was found in front of a TV that had stolen his face.”

“Mmm. Nice trick, that. Torchwood learnt it from Florizel Street, at the Coronation. My colleague was a con-man, once. He’s always had a fondness for The Wire.”

“You and Harkness and the rest. You think you’re playing a game of blitz chess with the New World Order. Every piece you move could wreck our world.”

“Yes. And when was the last time UNIT moved anything, or anyone? The 456 came, and everyone was dying; you sat on your arses. The Miracle came, and _no one_ was dying; you did the same. You’re the woman in the bubble, Dr. Stewart. Rather literally.”

“What do you…?” Kate glanced around the room, her brow furrowing and smoothing again as she did so. “Ah. I see. Spatial distortions. A localized space-time bubble – impressive.”

“Glad you think so. We call it a Time Lock. Just making absolutely certain that we’re not disturbed.”

“Surely a little OTT to achieve a base invasion, even for Torchwood?”

“It was late, and I couldn’t find a pizza.”

“No. It’s more than that.” Kate sighed, and stood up. She walked around the table to stand by Gwen. “Martha Jones took me up into the light to learn her lesson. What does Gwen Cooper want to teach me down here in the dark?”

“Very astute. I misjudged you, Dr. Stewart. You’re something new.” Gwen bit her lip, and looked away. “The woman who designed the original Time Lock was a genius. She was probably the smartest human being I’ve ever met. UNIT put her in a cage. No trial; no light; no hope. You treat your corpse-birds better than you treated her. I only knew the truth after she died.”

Kate swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “Torchwood has done worse.”

“I can’t deny it. Our sins are numberless. Before I wore out my first biro at the Hub, I caused an apocalypse. But you’re UNIT.” The Welshwoman’s voice was quiet, almost wistful. “You’re there to be better than the likes of us.”

“UNIT can be what it was again. That’s my ambition…” 

Kate held out her hand. After a long moment, Gwen Cooper clasped it.

“…But we’ll need a little help from our friends.”

“I’m glad. And it’s good that you spoke to Martha. But there’s one last stop you have to make.”

“What will I find there, Gwen Cooper?”

“What we’ve lost.”

3\. The Wish House 

Bannerman Road, in the early winter evening. A blonde woman, no longer young, sat on the ground, resting her back against the closed door of Number Thirteen.

“When I was a little girl, my father used to read to me from Kipling. ‘Recessional’, stuff like that. He was a bit Old Empire at heart, my dad. But you know that. You met him.”

Someone, perhaps more than one person, was shifting weight from foot to foot behind the door. Kate could hear the bare boards creak. She bowed her head, and continued:

“ _The tumult and the shouting dies-The Captains and the Kings depart_. He’s gone now. I know… I know she is, too.”

The movement behind the door had stilled.

“His favourite tale was one he didn’t read me. It was about a house, with things beyond imagining inside it. You could go up to its front door, and whisper in its letter-box, and make a wish. But it had to be a most particular wish. Because all you could ask from a Wish House was to take on someone else’s trouble.

“I came to let you know. I’m Kate Stewart. And I’m here.”

She heard a contented sigh as they moved away. 

FINIS


End file.
